By looking at the spacing of poppy seeds this morning after 48 hours of cold fermentation the dough ball has not doubled in size, because the spacing of the poppy seeds are not a little over 1 ľĒ apart. The dough ball on the bottom does look like it is fermenting well. There are now two small bubbles on the top of the dough ball, but the rest of dough ball is still firm. This dough ball seems to be fermenting slowly with the higher amount of yeast that was used and it did not have any rapid fermentation at any point in time that I could see.

I am going to have to use the dough ball to make a pizza later today even if it doesnít double in size, because tomorrow I will be too busy to make a pizza.

I wondered when if I should roll out this dough ball, or try to pressed it open by hand and also if I should make the skin larger than my last attempt and bunch up the fluted rim a little more to see if a thinner middle skin would make the bottom crust crisper after the bake of around 425 degrees F. I do plan on dressing the pizza without a pre-bake after room temperature proofing the skin on the dark disk for about 15 to 20 minutes, unless I should try something else.

I'm not quite sure what is happening to your dough. I went back through all of my notes on my experiments, and even when using the ADY dry I did not experience what you have gotten with the latest dough. There were a couple of instances where the dough seemed to ferment quite slowly, with little increase in the spacing of the poppy seeds, but eventually the spacing did increase. I even remember asking myself at the time if perhaps the poppy seed trick does not work as well or as consistently with the HRI type of clone dough, with all the oil, etc. November, who showed me the poppy seed trick, said that it didn't always work. But, like you, I saw from the sides and bottom of the glass storage container that there were the usual bubbles of fermentation. Also, to my eye the dough seemed to expand even without a lot of increase in the spacing of the poppy seeds.

In Reply 734 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6112.msg249428.html#msg249428, you mentioned that you added the salt and the dry ADY after the oil. Did you add the salt and dry ADY in sequence (salt followed by the dry ADY) or simultaneously? I'm not sure it makes a difference but it may be useful to know for future reference. In cases like this, my practice is to repeat the experiment to see if the same results are achieved. As I mentioned before, the dry ADY trick is one that is used to prolong the fermentation period. I believe that Papa John's uses that method so that its dough will sustain a fermentation period (cold) of up to eight days. Maybe your latest dough is one such dough, but unlikely to go out to eight days because you are using considerably more ADY by several orders of magnitude.

I agree that you should use the dough, for the reasons you mentioned. There is clearly fermentation no matter what the poppy seeds are telling you. I'm not sure that it makes a difference whether you roll the dough out or press it out. Both methods were used over the course of the history of HRI. If you were to be consistent with present practice, you might press out the skin if it lends itself to that method.

I'm not quite sure what is happening to your dough. I went back through all of my notes on my experiments, and even when using the ADY dry I did not experience what you have gotten with the latest dough. There were a couple of instances where the dough seemed to ferment quite slowly, with little increase in the spacing of the poppy seeds, but eventually the spacing did increase. I even remember asking myself at the time if perhaps the poppy seed trick does not work as well or as consistently with the HRI type of clone dough, with all the oil, etc. November, who showed me the poppy seed trick, said that it didn't always work. But, like you, I saw from the sides and bottom of the glass storage container that there were the usual bubbles of fermentation. Also, to my eye the dough seemed to expand even without a lot of increase in the spacing of the poppy seeds.

In Reply 734 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6112.msg249428.html#msg249428, you mentioned that you added the salt and the dry ADY after the oil. Did you add the salt and dry ADY in sequence (salt followed by the dry ADY) or simultaneously? I'm not sure it makes a difference but it may be useful to know for future reference. In cases like this, my practice is to repeat the experiment to see if the same results are achieved. As I mentioned before, the dry ADY trick is one that is used to prolong the fermentation period. I believe that Papa John's uses that method so that its dough will sustain a fermentation period (cold) of up to eight days. Maybe your latest dough is one such dough, but unlikely to go out to eight days because you are using considerably more ADY by several orders of magnitude.

I agree that you should use the dough, for the reasons you mentioned. There is clearly fermentation no matter what the poppy seeds are telling you. I'm not sure that it makes a difference whether you roll the dough out or press it out. Both methods were used over the course of the history of HRI. If you were to be consistent with present practice, you might press out the skin if it lends itself to that method.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for going back through all of your notes on your experiments and telling me the spacing of your poppy seeds on your dough ball did eventually increase. I had also wondered if the poppy seed trick works with this dough since all the oil that is added. I recall November said the poppy seed trick doesnít always work. I thought the bottom of the dough was looking okay in the amounts it was fermenting, after I initially wondered if it was fermenting at all.

I posted at Reply 738 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6112.msg249594.html#msg249594that I did add the salt after 2 minutes into the final mix. I could see the dough tighten up at first when the salt was added. I didnít post that I mixed on speed 2 for 2 minutes after the salt was added and then added the ADY and mixed again, so the salt and ADY were sequenced and not mixed simultaneously. I can repeat this same dough experiment later if the final pizza turns out okay. I think the dry ADY trick is a good one. I never really knew about that until this thread. Interesting that you believe that Papa Johnís uses that method so that its dough will sustain a fermentation period of up to eight days. I sure donít think my dough ball would last up to 8 days because of the high amount of ADY.

I also wanted to add although my fridge temperature was initially lower in temperature when the dough ball went into the refrigerator, now is it actually the normal temperature. I know fridge temperatures change from opening and shutting the door, defrost cycles..etc. It is also cool in our area right now.

This is how this attempt went on an the HRI clone dough and HRI clone pizza.

The dough ball didnít double in size by the measurements of the poppy seeds spacing, but the dough ball did look fermented enough. The dough ball was taken out of the fridge at 6:30 PM and I thought I would first try to roll the dough out to a skin a little, and then try to press out the skin by hand. After rolling for a little I tried to pressed it out the rest of the way and even tried to pick it up and stretch by hand, but as can be seen there wanted to be two tears in the skin, so I finished rolling the skin out to 13Ē. I rolled to 13Ē to see if a thinner crust might be able to be crisper on the bottom crust. I first folded over the edges of the rim and then fluted. The skin was docked before fluting. The skin on the dark disk was tempered for 20 minutes at room temperature at about 70 degrees F. A couple parts of the fluted rim wanted to fall some so I pushed them back up and fluted those parts again.

The pizza was dressed right after the skin was tempered. Until the sauce and mozzarella were applied the one side of the fluted rim wanted to sag down, so I fluted that again. Until the whole pizza was dressed the fluted edges seemed to behave better, in that they did stay upright then. I didnít use a lot of bench flour when rolling, so I donít know if I would have used more bench flour if that might have made the fluted edges stay upright better. I could see that even before trying to flute the skin that it was going to give those dimples right near the edges of the dark disk. I donít know if more flour would have been used when rolling if that would improve those dimples either, but I did see that the longer the fluted skin sat out the more it wanted to stay upright without sagging.

The pizza was dressed with a hot sausage I had purchased at my local supermarket on sale for .99. The amounts of ingredients used on this pizza were 7 ounces of the hot sausage, 6.5 ounces of LMPS mozzarella, 14 slices of pepperoni, 1.1 ounce of diced green peppers and 4 ounces of sauce.

The pizza was baked on the second to the top rack of the oven at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes, then I removed the bottom rack and put it on the top oven rack position for the last 2 minutes because the cheese wasnít browning enough. I would have put the top rack in at first, but I thought it would be too close to the pizza for me to be able to watch what was going on in the bake. Total bake time was 17 minutes. The fluted edges did stay upright in the oven, with no sagging. The edge crust got a little too brown. There was no real gum lines as can be seen in the photos. The baked pizza was 11 Ĺ ď. I liked the thicker rim crust better than when I fluted thinner in the looks and taste. The bottom crust didnít seem any thinner to me though.

The HRI clone pizza did turn out very tasty in my opinion, in that the crust did have a good taste and the bottom crust and fluted edges were flaky. I sure donít know though if they were flaky enough, since I never ate any real HRI pizzas at their pizzerias. I did really like the combination of toppings on this pizza. At least I also found out a pre-bake of the skin really wasnít needed to make a decent pizza.

Donít mind my fingers because I was outside working today, so my fingernails arenít in the best shape.

Peter,I'm ready to try another HRI pizza. Would it be out of bounds on this thread to try to make it in a 12-inch cutter pan? I want to do a sausage and mushroom (and maybe pepperoni) pizza. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Peter,I'm ready to try another HRI pizza. Would it be out of bounds on this thread to try to make it in a 12-inch cutter pan? I want to do a sausage and mushroom (and maybe pepperoni) pizza. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Jay,I did one a week ago in a 12"cutter pan. I used some technique that lamination expert member John "fazzari" is helping me with...I inadvertently used a cutter pan instead of his recommended "straight on the stone". I can tell you that mine did not work although it did produce some areas that had very promising crazy good layers/flakiness. I have not given up on this HRI deal and now that my bronchitis is gone I'm back in the saddle.

Jay,I did one a week ago in a 12"cutter pan. I used some technique that lamination expert member John "fazzari" is helping me with...I inadvertently used a cutter pan instead of his recommended "straight on the stone". I can tell you that mine did not work although it did produce some areas that had very promising crazy good layers/flakiness. I have not given up on this HRI deal and now that my bronchitis is gone I'm back in the saddle.

Bob

Bob,Glad you're feeling better. A lamination technique sounds interesting. I'll have to get one of my favorite local pizzas and post some pix, they do something like that. I just have no idea how.

EVERYONE !I'm a newbie to the forum (well, as a registered member)But not a newbie to pizza experimentation (many successes and a few failures)I just wanna give a shout out to you guys, I feel like the prodigal son who has come back to his family.I'm looking forward to learning as well as sharing some of my "avant garde" techniques and "home-oven" work arounds !!!!Lets continue to be the coolest kids on the block by blowing away our friends with KILLER PIZZA !!!Cheers,Gruvy

I just spent several hours skimming all 39 pages or so of this thread. Sorry I didn't read all the post, it is just too overwhelming. I commend everyone for their efforts. I've never had an HRI pie, but based on the discription and efforts, I want to give it a try. Instead of building on everyone's efforts I want to take a slightly new approach. I have a few thoughts in mind concerning the characteristics of this peculiar crust. Sorry if any of this has already been discussed or tried but it's where my gut tells me to go. Again, I apologize for not having read every post here.

1) yeasty flavor. Of all the doughs I've ever made from emergency doughs to moderately long fermented doughs, the ONLY doughs that had that yeasty taste whether it be pizza or dinner rolls were emergency doughs with around 2% cake yeast. If you all want that "yeasty" flavor, that is where I would look.

2)Flakiness and use of oil versus solid fats. I know the ingredients list corn oil and I am aware that Norma mentioned modifying a pie crust recipe. I make an ETREMELY flaky pie crust that is basically comprised of 50% shortening and 50% AP flour with just a small amount of water, salt, sugar, vinegar, and an egg. I'm not suggesting using a pie crust recipe for this dough, but I will be starting out with about 25% to perhaps 30%+ butter flavor crisco shortening and then working in small amounts of water to get a semi stiff dough. I will also be using the pie crust technique of cutting the fat into the flour first. The crumbles, especially marble sized should help create that layered effect resembling lamination.

My pie crust also calls for a small amount of vinegar. It is suppose to help relax the gluten. What I need to know from those of you who have eaten a lot of this pizza is if the crust is chewy at all? How much chew is there? A little or a lot or none at all? Again, I'm not making a pie crust per se, but will use that knowledge to make a HRI clone with similar crust characteristics.

My pie crust recipe also calls for freezing the dough first and then allowing it thaw out. The reviews that I read on this particular pie crust, one poster commented on how he had tested freezing vs not freezing the pie crust and that there was a difference in flakiness. Is it possible that HRI is freezing their dough first or keeping them at really cold temps prior to thawing out and making pizza? Just wondering.

Anyways, I hope to attempt this in the next several weeks and will try to post pictures if I get anything close to what HRI is suppose to look like.

I missed your post because I was away and didn't get an email that you replied on this thread. I wish you the best when you decide to give your method a try. I do have two frozen Home Run Inn pizzas left to try and I am interested in trying to see if the Ultra Thin pizza does get those layers in the crust when it is baked. There is some way that Home Run Inn crusts gets those layers of flakiness, but I sure haven't been able to achieve it yet.

Thank you Norma and Garvey for the description of the HRI crust. I really want to try and make this crust, but not ever having had it and only going by pictures and descriptions from members poses a unique challenge to me.

I just mixed up my first batch of experimental dough (one of many I am sure) and wanted to share some thoughts and bounce some ideas off of you HRI experts.

In keeping with the pie crust technique, I cut the shortening into the flour to make a crumbly texture like that of rough sand. I opted for this technique b/c I believe this is where the layered effect comes from and not actual lamination of the dough. I then dissolved my salt and sugar into the water and added the water to the crumbly flour and shortening mixture. As I began to mix this up, I noticed 2 things right away...1) the dough resembles my pie dough where I could visually see layers upon layers of dough coming together. Think flaky lamination effect.2) the dough felt too dry initially. I then proceeded to up the amount of water by small increments while I kneaded the dough gently to incorporate the new water until the dough felt "right" to me. As I was doing this though I noted that the layering (lamination) effect was disappearing as more and more water was incorporated. I stopped adding water and worked the dough a bit more with a final hydration of 64% hydration.

I am noting this just to say that I believe the laminating effect in the crust is due to 2 things. Cutting the oil/fat into the flour first and secondly an overall relatively low hydration dough. Keeping the hydration low accomplishes 2 things. One it preserves and layering effect from the fat and secondly it will give that drier crispier and flaky crust. This would seem to be inline with Garvey's observation that crust doesn't bend or droop when picked up and it is flaky without "chew" to it. Garvey also shared with me in a PM that when the crust is cut, there will be chips or flakes of crust on the plate.

I went ahead and made a 2nd batch with 60% hydration for pictures and testing purposes. 60% hydration in my dry and elvated climate is closer to a 56% hydration at sea level. Anywho, this batch felt really too dry to me so I wrapped it in plastic wrap and will let it sit out for a bit to see if it won't soften up. I'm posting some pictures to show the layering effect in the dough. Pic 1 is after water is added and dough is beginning to form. Pic 2, after a short and gentle incoporation of the water. You can see the dough is flaking off onto the bench. I don't know if this will translate through post bake. Who knows, I may just end up with a dense crust.

I wanted to ask you HRI experts a question. When the dough is rolled out, about how thick is it? 1/8" thick? Also after rolling out and docking, do you sauce and top immediately and the pie goes into the oven right away or is the rolled dough allow to proof up a bit before baking?

Since I never really had a real HRI pizza and only tried the frozen ones, this dough and pizza also pose a unique challenge for me and something I could not get right, especially with the flakiness in the crust.

Are you really planning on making a clone HRI pizza, or do you just want to make a flaky crust? If you really want to make a HRI clone, corn oil is used.

I think if I wasn't trying to make an attempted HRI clone, I might be able to get the flakiness in the crust with another formulation, but every time I did try to make an HRI clone with different problems along the way. The last attempt I made was good in my opinion, but I think with me rolling the dough more than I should have really didn't make that pizza an HRI clone pizza.